This is an open-ended project for preschool and elementary school children based on the book Henri, Egg Artiste by Marcus Pfister.This post has been refreshed on March 23, 2014 with new graphics, text and links. Disclosure: I am an Amazon associate and this post contains affiliate links. For full disclosure, please click here and thank you for supporting my blog!

Henri, Egg Artiste

One of the best Easter books we read this year was Henri, Egg Artiste by Marcus Pfister, a German author well known for his Rainbow Fish books. A wonderful thing about this book is that it allows parents to introduce children to famous works of art, since that’s where the main character finds an inspiration for his egg masterpieces. There is also a nice twist in the book, since Henri’s eggs look “almost” like original paintings, and Smarty enjoyed playing “find the differences” game (photographs of original paintings are included in the back of the book together with information on artists).

Paintings on Foil Eggs

I wanted to try paintings on foil for a while now, so I cut several “egg-like” cardboard shapes and wrapped them in aluminum foil. Smarty was not fully on board at first, since she already spent some time crafting in the library earlier that day. She cheered up when she found out that she will be painting with acrylics. Acrylics is still a big (and messy!) deal for my 4 year old artist.

Great Artists Through Eyes of a 4 Year Old

Smarty doved right in and first of all recreated the wooden striped egg that her father made for our seasonal candleholder. Clearly in her eyes he is the best artist that ever walked on Earth. Then came Van Gogh swirls (but I started them to give her an idea) and finally some point art. I really like how these eggs came out. I wanted to give them out as presents, but Smarty only agreed to give away my egg (not pictured above). She wanted to keep hers in her room as Easter decoration.

Planet Smarty Pants Button

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